NGA: Research and Job Opportunities

The National Geospatial Agency (NGA) has following openings for US Nationals. The deadline for application is April 30, 2008.

Mathematics of Complex Networks for GeoINT Analysis
NGA analysts need to capture and analyze spatial and temporal aspects of both manmade systems used for communication, commerce, and other infrastructure, and of natural systems that underlie physical, biological, and social phenomena.

Applicants should have received a Doctoral Degree in mathematics or statistics or related discipline within three years of the desired starting date, or completion of all requirements for the degree should be expected on or about the starting date. Current college or university faculty members on sabbatical will also be considered.

Computer Vision Specialist, Visiting Scientist
NGA is developing a suite of adequacy evaluations for computer vision tools. The evaluations will be built on properties of remotely sensed images that appear to be sources of difficulty in image understanding. The effort includes identification of image characteristics frequently associated with failure of computer vision approaches, development and testing figures of merit, assembling test data, executing benchmarks and evaluating results. NGA anticipates using the fruits of this effort to identify priorities for future research and to assess progress toward NGA goals.

Spatial Language Specialist
The Intelligence Community relies extensively on natural language (both written and spoken) accounts of geography and of movement. Today’s tools for extracting information from such accounts are extremely limited, and tools for integrating and comparing the extracted information, even more so. Intelligence analysts need to capture, extract and analyze descriptions of location and of movement from natural language texts such as newspaper accounts or written narratives. We are particularly interested in approaches which extract and represent complex spatio-temporal relationships among objects of interest, including accounts of movement, in forms that can be visualized, manipulated, and integrated with other data such as stable geospatial data sets or data bases of events or movement.

Applicants should have received a Doctoral Degree in linguistics, computer science, engineering, geospatial information science or a related discipline within five years of the desired starting date or should expect to complete all degree requirements on or about the starting date. Current college or university faculty members on sabbatical will also be considered.